At least in America. Apparently Pacific Rim is taking everybody by surprise with how well it’s doing overseas. As in “record-breaking”.

There was a lot of argument that really, Pacific Rim‘s performance in China would be the deciding factor over whether or not a robots-vs.-giant monsters movie gets a sequel. So, how’d it do?

The movie, from Guillermo del Toro, marked the biggest start for any WB film, eclipsing the opening day of the final Harry Potter film by 23 percent. It also toppled Universal’s Fast & Furious 6 from the top spot at the Chinese box office and boasted the second-highest opening day of the year for a Hollywood title after Iron Man 3.

It’s worth noting that the movie hasn’t done Avatar numbers at the overseas box office, but the fact that it’s doing well, at all, is turning a few heads. It helps that it hasn’t opened in Japan yet, and for obvious reasons it’s expected to do pretty well there.

Of interest here is that Legendary Pictures, which put up most of the money, is interested enough in a sequel that Guillermo Del Toro and Travis Beacham are writing it. I had some problems with the movie but it’s hard to argue that it didn’t deliver all the monster-punching it promised and then some. Apparently, the sequel will involve Jaegers, kaiju, and giant cyborgs: We hope it happens, because that’s just too amazing not to.